Version 5.6 is now available with some great new features and enhancements.

What’s new in ClientConnect?

Menu/Navigation Changes

ENHANCED: Mail Merge now uses the entire InfoView merging engine rather than just the client file. This means that you have access to the same set of merge fields, regardless of whether you are merging to a single client or to a group of clients. This one has given us so many headaches in Support!

Sign-In Screen

NEW: There is a new function that allows you to manually disable a client's access to your centre. When they try to sign in, you will get a popup that details why they are not allowed entry.

To disable a client, highlight their name in the Clients and Enquiries screen and go to Other Actions > Disable Access Control.

Enter the date and a reason for the access block.

To allow the client access again, you can go through the same steps - ie. highlight the client, go to 'Other Actions' > 'Re-Activate Access Control'.

Alternatively, open the client file and click on the link 'Access control is currently suspended'.

You will then be asked to confirm that you want to re-enable access for this client.

Un-attended Sign-In Screen

NEW: There is a new feature that allows you to disable access to your centre. Refer to the details above.

ENHANCED: Clients now have the ability to sign into more than one class from the Un-Attended sign in screen.

ENHANCED: If a client is manually cancelled, the cancel date and reason (if entered) will display on the popup toaster message when they sign in.

CHANGED: The Unattended Signin screen can now show 'punchcard summary' text on sign-in.

Daily Processes

ENHANCED: In Daily Processes, any cancelled Memberships are now processed before recurring invoices are created. This will avoid the situation where a cancelled member could be charged incorrectly.

ENHANCED: Similar to cancelled Memberships, any clients that have been flagged inactive will now be processed before recurring invoices in Daily Processes. This means that they would not have an invoice created if they are inactive.

FIXED: In some cases, Daily Processes were being executed twice for some dates - depending on your network setup. This has now been fixed.

Common Tasks

Overdue Client Accounts

NEW: There is a new option that allows you to open the client record from within the Overdue Account screen.

NEW: There is a new option in the Overdue Account screen that allows you access to more client information on this screen. You can use the Field Chooser to add columns for Mobile Phone Number, Email address, home address etc. This means that you can easily get in touch with the client to chase the debt.

NEW: There is a new option on the Overdue Accounts screen that allows you to generate the invoice for the relevant client. This means you can easily print out the required invoices and send them to your clients as a subtle reminder of their dues.

Followups Due

NEW: There is a new option in the Followups Due screen that allows you access to more client information on this screen. You can use the Field Chooser to add columns for Mobile Phone Number, Email address, home address etc. This means that you can easily get in touch with the client to complete the follow up.

NEW: It is now possible to open the client record and print from the Followups Due screen.

FIXED: There was an issue, under certain circumstances, where a client would generate several duplicate followups instead of just one. This has now been fixed so that you shouldn't get any duplicates. If you already have duplicated followups in your database, please let us know and we can run a script to get rid of these for you.

Clients and Enquiries

NEW: There is a new option that allows you to record a message for a group of clients - rather than having to enter the message one by one for each client. Go to Clients & Enquiries and create the required view, that is, who you want to receive the message. This could be all clients, or just filter to a selection of clients in that view. Select 'Other actions' > 'Leave Bulk Client Messages' and enter the relevant message. This message will appear when these clients are marked attended at bookings, when they sign in via the member sign-in and also on the un-attended sign-in if you wish.

RECYCLED: We recently made changes to the Client Account screen so that you could easily see the transactions associated with a particular invoice. However, some of you have let us know that the 'old' account screen had its benefits too - so we've put it back. Sort of!

If you open the Client Account screen/tab, you'll see transactions displayed as below, (the new screen):-

If you'd prefer to see the 'old' account screen, highlight the relevant client on the C&E screen and simply hold down the 'shift' key while you click 'Client Account' from the ribbon menu.

FIXED: There is an option when you are saving client billing details that will validate the credit card number and check whether the card is expired. This validation was previously turned on by default and could not be turned off. This has now been fixed so that you are not forced to validate the card.

To access this setting, go to File Menu > Control Panel > General Software Settings

FIXED: In some cases when paying instalment invoices, the 'Change Due' screen would appear even though there was no change. This has now been fixed.

NEW: There is now an option to rotate a client photo if necessary. As more clubs are using iphones and ipads to take their client photos, some of these were ending up as landscape and they couldn't be rotated (as this is saved on the photo itself). This has now been fixed. To rotate a photo, simply right-click on the photo in the client file and select rotate.

ENHANCED: The option to cancel a Membership is not available if the client doesn't have a Membership!

FIXED: If you tried to re-number a client from within the client file, the incorrect client would be re-numbered! This has now been fixed.

Billing

NEW: When processing your billing, you can now filter the list of invoices. You can then use 'Select Visible Only' to tick the invoices in the view and submit only these. This allows you greater flexibility in choosing which invoices to submit in which batch.

NEW: The billing file that is created 'behind the scenes' will now specify the billing method that was used eg. Ezidebit, DebitConnect etc. The year is also included in the date portion of the file name to make searching easier.

NEW: There is a new option in Billing that will record the Decline Reason in the client's Contact History. Note that this only applies to billing clients that process their declines through ClientConnect.

When you process a Decline for a client, the information will be recorded as a contact history in their file so you have a record of why the transaction failed eg. insufficient funds etc. The information that is stored is that provided by the billing company and will therefore use their codes/abbreviations etc.

To turn on this feature, go to File Menu > Control Panel > Instalments and Billing and turn on the checkbox 'Record a contact history entry on declines'.

FIXED: In instances where the Ezidebit billing amount was greater than a thousand dollars, ClientConnect would crash. This has now been fixed so we can accommodate larger amounts.

ENHANCED: Clients using DebitConnect for billing now have a new option to re-generate the billing ID for their transactions. This is useful for when a client has a decline and the transaction needs to be re-submitted. The ID needs to be regenerated so the transaction can be re-sent. Note that this only applies to DebitConnect customers.

NEW: You can now activate/reactivate a client whom Ezidebit has marked as INACTIVE at their end. Re-sync the client from the ‘Recurring (debit)’ tab

Memberships

NEW: There is an exciting new feature that allows you to place a limit on the number of visits associated with a Membership. Edit the particular Membership and enter the number of 'allowable attendances'. This will then be tracked when the client signs in. The number of visits remaining will be visible on the client file, on the Membership tab.

NEW: ClientConnect will always charge the Joining fee (if there is one) when a client makes their first Membership purchase. Previously, if there were any purchases (eg. POS, Services) the joining fee would not be charged.

ENHANCED: If a client had a cancelled Membership on their file, they would still be charged a joining fee when purchasing their next Membership. This has now been changed so if they've ever had a Membership, they are not charged any more joining fees on subsequent purchases.

ENHANCED: When cancelling a Membership, the Cancel Reason now displays all of the available entries in alphabetical order.

ENHANCED: Membership Expiry Date is now calculated based on the Billing Start Date rather than the Start Date.

ENHANCED: The field for Membership Expiry Date is now available in the list of fields to include on the Membership Contract.

FIXED: Membership Contracts were not always printing all details for a membership renewal. This has now been fixed.

FIXED: When using the 'Forward Date' function for Membership Expiry Dates, the date would only change by 7 days at a time, regardless of how many days you entered. This has now been fixed.

FIXED: The 'Last Renewed Date' is now only updated when selling your second or subsequent Membership to a client ie. a renewal.

ENHANCED: When you bring somebody back early from Suspension, the Suspension History is now updated to reflect the changed dates. Also, a Contact Record is added to their 'Contacts and Marketing' tab to advise of this event.

ENHANCED: When editing a Membership Type, if you change the 'membership type' field, you will now be prompted to update all existing customers on this Membership.

Services & Packages

FIXED: Open ended Packages were generating invoices using the original Package value, not the sold value. This means that discounts/additions were not being carried across for ongoing billing. This has now been fixed.

FIXED: PAYG Services are now handled correctly when using the Responsible Parties feature. When you submit these for billing, only the 'owner' is billed for the service.

ENHANCED: When using the 'Copy Service' feature, the settings for PAYG, renewal reminders etc. are now copied across to the new service. Previously you had to manually add some of these settings.

Bookings Explorer

FIXED: In some cases, Booking Durations were increasing in value after loading an upgrade of ClientConnect. As this was only occurring in a particular set of circumstances, it has been difficult to isolate, but changes have now been made to address this.

ENHANCED: When dragging Bookings, not all of the internal fields were being updated correctly. This has now been rectified.

ENHANCED: When deleting a series of Bookings, you now have 3 options from which to choose. * delete just this current booking * delete ALL ACTIVE bookings in this series. These may be in the past, but as long as the booking is not marked complete, it will be deleted. * delete the current booking and any future bookings in this series.

ENHANCED: When you send the booking schedule to Resources via SMS, there is now an option to include the participant's names.

Point of Sale

NEW: When in POS, you can now use the 'F7' key to trigger the cash drawer (no sale).

ENHANCED: In some instances, the X-read would crash (if POS terminals were being used) when you tried to select a date range. This has now been fixed

FIXED: An issue was identified that if you double-clicked 'Sell on Credit' or 'Make Sale' in POS, you would end up with double ups of transactions. This has now been rectified so if you do happen to double click, you won't get duplicates.

FIXED: If you used 're-print last docket' in POS, ClientConnect would crash. This has now been fixed.

FIXED: In some cases, POS would crash when you were printing a receipt via the popup POS window. This has now been fixed.

FIXED: Pressing [Del] on the payment instalment screen would invoke a 'delete record' prompt and allow you to delete a payment method eg. cash, credit. This has now been fixed.

ENHANCED: You can now adjust the start/end line feeds for serial docket printers so you can better align your receipts.

Reports

NEW: Negative numbers will now show in brackets in group summaries to make it clearer that they are negative. Note that this only applies to newly created Reports and InfoViews.

FIXED: Older reports that were downloaded from the Online Reports Library didn't always display their category correctly. This has now been fixed.

Import Clients into Database

NEW: Previously when you imported client data into the database, you had to ensure that items such as Client Category etc were already created in the database. This has now been fixed - so that if the item does not exist in the database, it will simply be added.

InfoViews

FIXED: 'Primary Contact Name' wasn't displaying correctly in InfoViews and Reports. This has now been fixed.

NEW: There is a new drop down menu in the InfoView ribbon - "Other Options". This lets you have some control over the level of grouping in the view.

For example, in my Clients and Enquiries list, I can group by Membership Type, then by Membership Expiry Date, which looks like this. This is the 'fully collapsed view' where I can only see my first level of grouping - which is Membership Type.

Go to Other Actions > Fully Expand Groups and you will see all levels of detail like this. This will show me every Membership type and every client listed under every separate Expiry date.

The other option is to see partially collapsed grouping as follows. This will show me every Membership Type, but still group the Expiry dates. This may be more useful if you have several clients expiring on the same day, but you don't necessarily need to see their individual details at this point.

NOTE that when you print/export this to Excel, the groups are fully expanded.

NEW: Negative numbers will now show in brackets in group summaries to make it clearer that they are negative. Note that this only applies to newly created Reports and InfoViews.

FIXED: When Printing/Previewing an InfoView, if you had expanded/collapsed grouping, this was ignored. This has now been fixed.

WinDSX

NEW: We are now a step closer to being able to import attendances from WinDSX back into ClientConnect. Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more information.

WuFoo

NEW: There is a new integration that allows you to capture prospects directly from your website and download these into ClientConnect as Enquiries. For more information on this feature and pricing, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 1300-802-377.

NEW: The Enquiry Methods list is now automatically updated with values imported from these Web Enquiries.

Important Notice regarding Microsoft Winows XP

Microsoft announced that as of the 8th April 2014 they no longer support Windows XP and warn that your computer may no longer be fully secure.

As a progressive developer and to provide our customers with the very best technology, PulseTec Solutions strives to optimise its solutions to take advantage of the latest operating systems and technology.

Therefore as a result of this announcement from Microsoft, we can no longer guarantee support for our products running on Microsoft Windows XP. Note that upgrading operating systems may also require hardware upgrades to maintain acceptable system performance. Read the following for more details.

The team here at ClientConnect Software like to reflect on just how proud we are to be Australian and just how lucky we are to be living in such a great country. We are also proud to to be able to say that whilst it is a popular move by many companies to move jobs overseas to reduce wage costs, we have kept our support, development and sales teams in Australia. By choosing ClientConnect as your business management software you are supporting an Australian owned and operated company. In fact we even export our software to customers overseas.

Backups, Old Hardware and Data Corruption

Read this!! It could save you from misery and frustration!

You all would have read countless newsletters and guides suggesting you take regular backups of your systems. What you don't hear about so often is the importance of having up to date, reliable hardware.

Recently, one of our clients called because they couldn't connect to their ClientConnect database - even though everything was perfectly normal the day before. After some diagnosis by our friendly Support Team, it was discovered that the database had been marked as 'suspect' in SQL which indicates that the data had become corrupt.

This type of issue is most commonly caused by failing hardware, bad sectors on a drive etc. It turned out that this computer was several years old, had less than 2 GB of RAM and was still running Windows XP - definitely time to update!

There was a happy ending to this story, as the client had a backup from lunch time the day before. We were able to restore the database and send the client out computer shopping with no major interruptions to the business. Phew!

To read the full newsletter and previous newsletters please visit our support website